Sunday, February 15, 2009

Miscellany

Being a collection of items not worthy of a full day’s posting:

Knockspell Magazine #1 is now available in print format via Lulu. If you’re like me and prefer to have a hardcopy which to rumple and fetish, you can get the saddle-stitch version or the perfect-bound version. Each of these costs $10.73. The .pdf version is also available for $3.00.

Stonehell continues to grow in a most pleasing manner. I’ve finished Level 2C except for a final proofread and Level 2D just needs a few minor tweaks and to have the map scanned and imported into the document. Since Fridays tend to be rather slow days here in the blogosphere, I’m thinking that new sections of the dungeon will appear here as a regular Friday feature for the foreseeable future. It is my hope to turn Stonehell into a complete ten level megadungeon over the course of the year and to make it a regular feature here for those of you running it or thinking of adding it to your home games.

Speaking of Stonehell, I’ve been hearing that several people have already run groups through its halls or plan to do so in the near future. If you are one of those people or have played in a party that has explored those halls, I’d love to hear about your experiences in the dungeon. You can send me write-ups of actual play sessions, compliments, criticisms, etc. to poleandrope [at] gmail [dot] com. I reserve the right to post here anything you might write – good or bad – from time to time to let other readers see what’s been going on in those funky depths. Any such letter may be slightly edited for spelling and the like, but not for content.

In association with the above, I have a slight vanity project in which I could use the help of those who’ve ventured into Stonehell. One of features that I originally planned on having in Gloomrisk was a magical chamber whose walls would list a roster of all the adventurers who had entered its hall in search of glory and fortune. Their names would appear inscribed on the walls for any who came across the room to see. I’d like to keep that idea alive for Stonehell. If you’ve experienced the dungeon and don’t want to submit a detailed email about your experiences in the dungeon, feel free to drop me a short email at the above address with just a roster of who was in your group and I’ll make sure that those names are preserved for posterity in association with the dungeon. I might add a “Rogues Gallery” to the right sidebar or make it a semi-regular post here, but I’ll end up doing something with it. Feel free to include class, sex, race, level, etc information as well as the names of any henchmen, hirelings, pack animals, and the like. I’ll see that you get on the list of “Hell’s Delvers” or perhaps “Hellvers” for short.

There’s one last thing on my mind and I’m not certain if it’s going to actually happen or not for a few reasons, but I thought I’d touch on it just to see if there was any reaction to it for better or for worse. As you’re all probably aware, GenCon season has officially started. Registration has begun and people are beginning to make arrangements to attend. I’ve never had the opportunity to attend GenCon myself, but my gut is telling me that this might be the year to correct that. As we all know, this is not the best of times for a lot of people financially. It is the nature of my own career that I sometimes find myself in between contract jobs and have to tighten my belt to make it through the downtimes. As it stands right now, I’ve just finished a project that took up two years of my life and I’m currently searching for another contract position. Money’s going to be tight until I land a new project. Despite this, I’d still like to make the trip out to Indianapolis to hobnob with my fellow gamers. It occurred to me that I might be able to help defray the costs of that trip by using this blog as a way to help generate some of the needed cash. Right now, I’m considering the possibility of adding a Paypal donation option to this site. Any money generated through donations would be applied solely to help pay for the GenCon trip. In the event that, even with donated money, I was unable to make the trip, any funds raised in that manner would either be applied to some project that would add to the old school gaming community or would be donated in full to a charity organization. Any donation would be strictly voluntary and in no way do I intend to limit the available materials or content of this site in order to generate money. In short, if you like what you read here on a regular basis or find Stonehell entertaining and useful, you could drop something into the kitty if you wished to. As I said before, I’m not certain I actually want to do this, but I thought it might bear mentioning now in case I swallow my pride and go this route. The only reason that I've even considered asking for donations is because I do make things such as Stonehell, the New Classes and Racial Variants for Basic Dungeons & Dragons and the Blank Mega Hex-Crawl Map available free here and wouldn't be asking for something in return for just my mad postings on the blog itself. My other options are to produce a game supplement of some manner and sell it online, play the waiting game and hope that I land a new contract sooner than later or just accept that this is not going to be the year. I’m going to put off making any firm decision for the moment until I get a better view of things.

Monday morning will be business as usual here. Hope you all had a great weekend and I’ll see you folks tomorrow morning.

2 comments:

Funny you should mention the PayPal donation button. I was considering the same thing, and for exactly the same reason. Money's really tight this year, but I REALLY want to go to GenCon. Haven't been in more than 15 years, and it seems like this is the year to go for us old-timers.

Who's to Blame

Despite having never been a professional adventurer, Michael Curtis has nonetheless deciphered cryptic writings, handled ancient maps and texts, ridden both a camel and an elephant, fallen off a mountain, participated in a mystical rite, and discovered the resting places of lost treasures. He can be contacted at poleandrope @ gmaildotcom